by Gray Dorsett, ARI Recruiting
Do you ‘score’ your list of recruits?
In the sales world, this strategy is commonly known as Lead Scoring, a practice that can be found in sales departments of every Fortune 500 company. Lead Scoring is a system to gauge the likelihood of success of prospective deals and leads. In recruiting we can use this same system to gauge and compare the likelihood of success in recruiting an athlete.
In this series we will show how any athletic program can create a Recruit Scoring system to improve the evaluations and streamline decision making.
How does Recruit Scoring help my recruiting program?
- Simplifies recruit evaluation process
Recruit Scoring systems make it easier to qualify recruits based on pre-determined criteria. Every coach is looking for certain characteristics in their athletes and each recruit satisfies them to a certain degree. By assigning scores to each attribute, the quality of the recruit is more readily understood
- Profiles a detailed profile of recruits
High level Recruit Scoring considers both behaviors and demographics, offering a clear and detailed picture of a recruit’s needs and interests. The system not only allows coaches to better understand the athletes, but also better understand exactly what they are looking for in their athletes.
- Scoring produces higher quality Recruits
Time is invaluable and it is not always possible to give 100% of your time to every recruit on your list. Recruit Scoring provides clarity as to which are the highest quality recruits, both in what they can offer your team and how likely they are to commit. With Recruit Scoring a recruiter can more easily understand where to invest their time.
Components of Recruit Scoring
Recruit Scoring is broken down in two distinct points of evaluation: Characteristics & Behaviors
Characteristics
Characteristic evaluations are typically done in stages. The first evaluation is conducted at beginning of the recruiting process, once an athlete enters your recruiting pipeline. A second evaluation can be done later as new important information is gathered. This can be from new game footage, a scouting trip or insightful conversation with that athlete.
Finally, at the end of the recruiting process it is helpful to perform one last evaluation to give a final picture of what the recruit is bringing to the table. This evaluation is best done as a team, taking in input from assistant coaches and especially any current athletes who have spent time with them during campus visits. Campus visits are a great opportunity for your team to really understand the character of the recruit, so involving them in the evaluation process is invaluable.
Behaviors
In contrast to characteristic evaluation, behaviors are constantly evaluated and considered. Every interaction with a recruit incorporates into this score, gauging their responsiveness and interest. Every type of interaction and response should have an exact score and be tracked, whether by hand or an automated system. Though the actions a coach takes to engage a recruit are important, it’s the recruits’ responses and own actions which carry the most weight into this score. For example, the weight of an outgoing phone call is far less than an incoming phone call, where the recruit is acting to reach out to you.
#1 Rule of Scoring: Consistency
All evaluation rules must be kept constant for every recruit. While scoring behaviors and responses is much more straight-forward, characteristic evaluations can be very difficult. It’s hard to be purely objective when evaluating skills or personality, but there are strategies to mitigate these shortcomings.
Making evaluations as a group, is a great way to offer additional perspective and extend the ‘evaluation memory’ of the team. It becomes easier to remember and understand how each quality is being evaluated, and the precedents set by past decisions.
What’s Next
Follow along in our series as we dive into Recruit Scoring, and show how any coach can use this Fortune 500 sales strategy to benefit their program.
In our next article we will outline the first component of Recruit Scoring: Characteristic Evaluation.
Gray Dorsett is a co-founder of Advanced Recruiting Intelligence (ARI), a leading recruiting contact management and evaluation software that’s changing the way college athletic programs track their prospects. It’s using next generation tech tools to help coaches make more strategic decisions, and saving them money through a more economical solution. For more information, or to see a free demo of this new advancement in recruiting, click here.